Last Hope
by HeartInTheWind
Summary: No need to have seen the show or know anything about it. This is the story of a family of those we would call aliens as they attempt to escape their dying world. - Just FYI taken over from my other account
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own the show or game Defiance, and this may not follow true to any already existing back stories**

**FYI: this story may exist on my other account but I plan to continue it from here**

**The ****Beginning**

**Chapter One**

Living in the red sands we were no stranger to heat. Dangerous and beautiful, like my wife Irana, the sand allowed our people to thrive. Irathients faced the bigotry and hatred of other races, we were called dirty and vermin, simply because we were not weak enough to succumb to every sickness. The other Votans believed us to be bellow them but their unfounded hate showed them to be weaker in spirit as well as body. But we were free from such prejudice in the red sands because other Votans were unable to handle the conditions on the little red planet closest to our sun.

The sand monsters, called rochan, were red as the sand, red as our hair. So they went unnoticed until it was too late. Too often a man had not sensed the presence of a rochan until they were half way down its gullet. The weather was our enemy as well due to our world being the closest habitable world to the sun. The heat would pound into us from above and its light would bounce off of the sands which were smooth like glass. The nausea and confusion from the two was called sun sickness and it was everyones greatest annoyance. But we adapted and we lived well thanks to trading sand jewels with the Sensoths and Liberatas. Perhaps we could have had a finer life if we traded with the Castithans. That is if we could find a Castithan willing to trade with us, even for something so desirable to them as a sand jewel. But we were a proud people, we still are, and would not stand to trade with the shtako who fought so dirty in our last war.

But it is to those shtako and their planet that we now run. Perhaps we will still die there. Perhaps the sun will expand into their world as well. I do not know if death due to our sun expanding would be too quick for us to know it had come. I do not know if we will feel our skin dry and burn and crack before we die. I do not know anything but that I will do all I can to see my family survive. Even deal with those dishonorable shtako.


	2. Chapter 2

**First Night In Town**

**Chapter Two**

Our landing could not have come soon enough. Crammed into a small, shaking, metal shell with another family of four made the already small quarters even more cramped. Steam from the landing jets filled the baggage room where Irana and I sat with our children. Little Yara seeing the steam curling through the slats of the ships walls squealed and threw her self back into her mothers arms. Irana and I, who sat behind her, fell back into the wall. My head and the wall impacted making an extremely unpleasant ringing sound, though as Irana was looking at me and laughing it must have been in my mind.

"Oh stop pouting you big baby! Such a thing is no thing," intoned my wife in a mock-stern voice.

"It was indeed a grievous blow! But perhaps a kiss from a fair maiden might distract me from the pain?" I joked while closing my eyes and screwing my face into the epitome of pain.

But it was a kiss too small to be Irana's that I felt. I opened my eyes to see that little Yara had climbed over her mother and now was wrapped around me. "Oh! She must be the finest maiden in the land for all that ails me has passed away like a shadow in the bright light!" Apparently my little girl did not enjoy such homages to her beauty as she bared her teeth at me and growled. It is no good to allow children to come into the habit of growling and raising their hackles at every little thing so as I rose to join my wife and son I picked Yara up by the ankles and said "Why, this does not look right!"

And so my little girl laughed making it easy enough for us to leave the ship in good cheer with the other family. Debarking the ship we found ourselves in a place of so many sights and sounds and colors that it dazzled me. There where Castithans everywhere! One sat before a stall of large brightly colored rugs calling out to the crowd "The best rugs! A nice rug for a pretty lady? I will give a pretty lady a discount! No? How about you sir? You look like someone who can appreciate the finer things in life."

Crammed right next to his stall was a perfume seller from whom came so many scents that I began to sneeze. Then we saw a jewelry seller with so many sparkling items, a tanner with fine furs, a bread seller and a fruit seller. So many things for sale! We must have landed in the market.

I was so mesmerized by this splendor, that I had never seen the like of, I did not notice the time until my wife said to me "It is getting dark, we should find a place to stay."

Finally making our way out of the market and into the streets where homes and only a few shops resided we began to look for a sign or some person who might give us directions. And luck was with us because we saw a sign saying "Lucky's Bar and Beds" hanging above the door of a purple wooded building. Going in I asked a man at a table where the inn-keeper was and was pointed to an uncommonly robust man with his sideburns braided into two tails and hanging to the top of his paunch.

"How much might one night be?" I asked overly polite to the Castithan devil.

Looking me up and down he said with a smirk on his face "Twenty rubons." That was a steep price and I would have haggled more if when I looked down I had not seen Yara falling asleep against my leg. Quickly figuring that it would translate to twelve hongs I pulled out the coins and passed them over.

But the inn-keeper did not take them, "Your money is no good here, it would seem."

My wife with blood shot eyes and limp hair must have been tired too because she almost jumped on the man, and would have had I not held her arms, while she snarled "Why? Is it because we are Irathient? You do not want us to kill all of your customers with our sickness? Well, no worries, we would not touch one of you with a long knife!"

His fat cheeks drew back and his eyes narrowed as he took joy in telling us, "No. Your money is worthless because you _people_ have nothing of worth now! Before you had your sand jewels, but none of you are strong enough to mine those now that the sun is closing in. How does it feel to know you aren't strong enough? Isn't that what you pride yourselves on? Your strength?" At the end he was practically wheezing his breath came so hard, and so was Irana as she barred her teeth at the man and hissed.

Pulling her from the inn with an arm around her waist and dragging my bag with the other I signaled to Venti to grab his mother's bag as well when we left. Practically falling out the door because she struggled in my arms I pulled us all over to the side of the door so I might whisper in her ear, "I thought we were suppose to be teaching Yara that this kind of behavior is not acceptable? Keep it up and she will learn another lesson and we will have a place to rest tonight, in a jail cell."

I let her pull back from me finally and as she stood there she huffed while straightening her tunic. She said in a voice, trying just a little too hard to sound calm, "Tonight we can trade something for lodgings and tomorrow we will find work."

That night we looked for someone to trade with. We would have given the inn-keepers something or traded with a passerby for money. But none would stop long enough to hear what we had. My observant son, Venti, suggested, "I think they believe we are beggars."

We tried until well after dark to trade with someone, we tried until we sat on the corner hunched over from exhaustion and little Yara already asleep on Venti's back. But we had no success and so we found ourselves curled into the wall of an alley that night. It might have been an hour or two that I slept before I awoke to find Yara no longer snuggled up between Irana and I. Looking around I saw her pushed against the other wall of the alley to avoid the dirty Castithan man who was whispering "Hey, little one, want to share my blanket?" as I came up behind him.

I pushed him away from my little daughter and pushed her behind me as I leaned towards him growling. My family awoke, and Venti quickly grasped the situation. Or I think he understood enough as one second he was sitting confused, the next his eyes were narrowing and in the next he was hurling himself at the Castithan. But only starting to come into his manhood at 16 he was no mach for a fully grown, if scrawny, man, so he was pushed into the wall. If it was only the man and me, I would have fought him, but I had my family to worry about so I grabbed my daughter and as many bags as I could while barking "Lets go!"

We rushed out of the alley around a corner and into a man.


End file.
